Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND DEMOCRACY
Third comes the accusation that public libraries have failed to move with the
times, that they are outdated custodians fixated on books rather than on the
modern forms of electronic information delivery. This is a critique which comes
most readily from post-Thatcherite sources, from groups whose emphasis may
be more on the cultural inadequacies of the old-fashioned, inflexible and fuddyduddy
library system than on economic stringencies and market opportunities.
The complaint here is motivated by a conviction that new technology-based
information, multimedia delivery and above all the Internet are the only future
for public libraries, and that adjustment to these bounties requires, before
anything else, a change in mindset – of outlook, expectations and organising principles
– from those working in the library service (Greenhalgh and Worpole,
1995). The message here is that libraries must invest in ICTs, brighten up the
paintwork, install PCs, relegate old and tatty literature, and sideline the old guard.
Old-fashioned librarians, with undue reverence for books and ‘library silence’,
have for far too long acted as custodians of the library. They must go, and the
library ‘modernise’.
This tone permeates New Library: The People’s Network, a seminal document
that announced a post-Thatcherite approach to the library service (Library and
Information Commission, 1997). It continues in ‘new times’ guru Charles
Leadbeater’s (2003) advice on ‘how to create a modern public library service’.
Seeing ‘virtual libraries’ just round the corner, Leadbeater accuses librarians of
being ‘in a state of denial’ of such proportions that decline seems terminal. Visits
are falling, as are loans, yet book sales have soared 20 per cent on the high street
since 1997. Against the likes of Borders and Waterstone’s, with their cappuccino
cafés and enticing three-for-two deals and sumptuous leather sofas, public
libraries appear tawdry and boring, refuge for the elderly and socially incompetent,
and employers of unadventurous losers (although bookshops themselves are
threatened by online book purchases). Libraries stand accused of being short of
‘management talent’, of having few ‘inspirational goals’, and lacking in ‘capacity
to deliver’. Accordingly, Leadbeater demands that public libraries act now to put
‘their house in order’ and stop blaming their failures on shortages of funds.
Modernise and stop whingeing is the message – or else face extinction.
Underpinning pressures towards marketisation was a sharp critique of public
libraries, one which comes from the Right of the political spectrum, but which
often draws on criticisms once made most vociferously by the Left. Perhaps most
prominently, the free library service is said to benefit disproportionately those
well able to buy books for themselves. For instance, while a majority of the public
are library members, estimates are that half of those are accounted for by the
20 per cent of the population labelled middle class. User surveys do indeed indicate
that active library users are predominantly middle class and that libraries
located in affluent areas get most public provision (since library issues have often
formed the basis for resource allocation).
Furthermore, libraries are accused not only of serving the better off, but also
of being elitist, promoting what might be loosely described as middle-class mores
which undervalue the cultures of, say, working-class or regional sectors (Dawes,
1978). This prejudice is evident not only in the routine selection of literature
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